Edwin was making progress swimming toward shore despite the cast on his leg. He swam toward the Jersey coast in long, overhand strokes.
Patrick, Joshua, and three crew members boarded the tender, then the deckhands began lowering the boat. Patrick looked up at the people clustered along the railing and spotted Gwen watching Edwin in shocked surprise. She liked Edwin. She bragged about his world travels and knowledge of antiques. This was going to hit her hard, but she had to learn that her wonderful, eccentric family had at least one truly rotten apple.
The boat wobbled as it hit the water. Crew members detached the ropes, and Patrick took his place beside Joshua, both of them rowing after Edwin. It didn’t take them long to pull alongside him. Edwin had resorted to a breaststroke, still heading for shore but barely making any progress as his strength faded.
Patrick leaned over to talk to him. “We can take you aboard now or do it on shore. Either way, you’re not going to escape.”
Edwin spit out a mouthful of water and kept struggling toward shore. “I was broke,” he said, panting and barely able to keep his head above water. The cast on his leg was probably getting heavier by the second.
“You ordered a hit on Liam because you were broke?”
“I didn’t want to do it,” Edwin panted, still swimming. “There’s a price on my head. If you get in too deep with the moneylenders, they play tough.”
“The kind of tough that ends up with a broken leg?”
“Yeah. Atlantic City . . . the cardroom.”
Edwin’s need for a plentiful stream of revenue might explain why Liam’s sudden arrival back in the family was such a threat. Liam was outspoken in his hostility to the steel merger. He could have stoked up the unions and delayed the creation of U.S. Steel. After getting control of his father’s shares, Liam might even have scuttled the deal for good, meaning that the lucrative dividends Edwin expected to earn from the deal would vanish. He’d made a preemptive strike to eliminate the possibility of Liam ever returning to the family.
Patrick released the oars, as did the other men in the boat. Edwin was no longer making any progress. A weak dog paddle was all he could manage, and he finally reached up to grasp the side of the boat, wheezing, his face sick.
“I don’t want to go back to the Black Rose,” he panted. “I don’t want to face them.”
It was understandable. They were only a few hundred yards from the shoreline, but Patrick didn’t feel like spending the rest of the evening traveling back to Manhattan from Jersey City. Sometimes a person didn’t have many choices in life, but Edwin had dug himself into this hole all by himself, and the people around him had suffered enough for it.
A crew member clamped a boarding ladder onto the side of the boat. Edwin still hesitated to take it.
“I can’t force you to climb aboard,” Patrick said. “I don’t want to watch you drown trying to swim to shore, but that’s your choice, not mine.”
Edwin climbed aboard, and the crew members scrambled to turn the boat around. The world’s most awkward family reunion on the Black Rose was about to occur.
40
After Edwin’s shameful fall from grace, Gwen did her best to look forward to her new life. She moved out of her house and onto the Black Rose to live with Liam until renovations to the apartment she’d purchased could be completed, and in September her new life would officially begin.
Liam teased her mercilessly. To his eyes, she had merely changed one college for another. She tried to explain that the safe, cozy world of Blackstone College was a very different place than the intimidating urban environment of New York University, but he wasn’t convinced.
“They’re all just rich college kids,” he said dismissively.
Maybe so, but she was about to embark on a doctorate in botany, something she had always longed for but lacked the courage to get because it meant leaving Blackstone College. She hadn’t been ready before.
Now she was. Someone else would take over her botany class at Blackstone College while she embarked on the challenges of original research, publication, and laboratory work. Someday she would like to return to Blackstone College as a botany professor, but first she had to earn that privilege by proving herself at New York University.
School started next month, and today her only task was to help Liam toilet train his dog. One of the first things Liam did after taking ownership of the Black Rose was to send for his beloved, slobbery bulldog, who was going to be living on the yacht with them. A box of gravel was set out near the stern of the ship, and they walked laps around the deck while waiting for the dog to do its business.
They rounded the bow of the ship, where the view overlooked the marina. The sun was just beginning to set, and Gwen spotted a familiar figure loping across the pier toward them.
“Tell me that isn’t who I think it is,” she said.
“Uncle Mick,” Liam confirmed in a grim voice. “That’s his wife walking beside him. Guard your wallet. They’re both crooks and desperate for cash.”
The publication of Mick’s memoir had been canceled. Since Liam’s return, it was obvious the memoir was a pack of lies. There were no Italians who’d kidnapped little Willy Blackstone. There was no unjust prosecution. Mick had kidnapped Willy Blackstone, then passed him off to his cousin when the police closed in on the Five Points. Crocket hated the Blackstones enough to hold on to the boy, raising him in the same dingy conditions the rest of the workers in the steel industry endured.
“Don’t even let them onboard,” Gwen advised. “You’re a respectable man of business now, and consorting with shady people can ruin your reputation.”
Liam ignored her pleas and lowered the gangway. Five minutes later, Mick and his blowsy wife were onboard, craning their necks to admire the fine brass fittings and elegant deck furnishings. Mick was rail-thin, his wife a little plump and bedraggled, and they both lugged overstuffed canvas satchels.
“We heard you’d moved aboard,” Mick said. “It seems to me you’ll be lonely here. Do you suppose you’ve got a room for me and Ruby?”
